There are some places people expect to be irrefutably unstylish. Just look at our inbox the day we revealed the best of Bangkok. And we soon realised our own attitude of sartorial supremacy, when the sales lad in one of those fancy Italian bag stores asked if we were from Nepal Ex-key-yoos-me? (Never mind the borderline-albino factor). Because that’s how people dress in Nepal, he said – bleached out ripped skinny jeans, striped oversized shirt and black patent ankle boots they’d of course need for kicking the goats if they stopped before base camp.

This ignorance, while inexcusable, makes it all the more more exciting to discover talent from exotic locales. Take confessed ‘maximalist’ Manish Arora (pictured top and above). Spring/summer’s detachable lion heads make shoulder pads look so middle-of-the-road, and you call that a tulip dress? Most embarrassing when London Fashion Week’s standout collection is by a codger from New Delhi, innit?

A similar thing could be said of the Thais, whose fashion-forward detail and lack of inhibition outshone European counterparts at Pret-A-Porter Paris last month. (Pictured above is Klar.)

It seems that being in the fashion wilderness is, in its own way, liberating. No Grazia espousing the virtues of investment dressing navy, and only ever one small US dollar order from relative richness. It makes sense that fringe-dwellers are leaving foreclosure-fearing fashionland natives for dead.